In Making Uzbekistan, Adeeb Khalid chronicles the tumultuous history of Central Asia in the age o... more In Making Uzbekistan, Adeeb Khalid chronicles the tumultuous history of Central Asia in the age of the Russian revolution. Traumatic upheavals—war, economic collapse, famine—transformed local society and brought new groups to positions of power and authority in Central Asia, just as the new revolutionary state began to create new institutions that redefined the nature of power in the region. This was also a time of hope and ambition in which local actors seized upon the opportunity presented by the revolution to reshape their society. As the intertwined passions of nation and revolution reconfigured the imaginations of Central Asia's intellectuals, the region was remade into national republics, of which Uzbekistan was of central importance.
Making use of archival sources from Uzbekistan and Russia as well as the Uzbek- and Tajik-language press and belles lettres of the period, Khalid provides the first coherent account of the political history of the 1920s in Uzbekistan. He explores the complex interaction between Uzbek intellectuals, local Bolsheviks, and Moscow to sketch out the flux of the situation in early-Soviet Central Asia. His focus on the Uzbek intelligentsia allows him to recast our understanding of Soviet nationalities policies. Uzbekistan, he argues, was not a creation of Soviet policies, but a project of the Muslim intelligentsia that emerged in the Soviet context through the interstices of the complex politics of the period. The energies unleashed by the revolution also made possible the golden age of modern culture, as authors experimented with new literary forms and the modern Uzbek language took shape. Making Uzbekistan introduces key texts from this period and argues that what the decade witnessed was nothing short of a cultural revolution.
How do Muslims relate to Islam in societies that experienced seventy years of Soviet rule? How di... more How do Muslims relate to Islam in societies that experienced seventy years of Soviet rule? How did the utopian Bolshevik project of remaking the world by extirpating religion from it affect Central Asia? Adeeb Khalid combines insights from the study of both Islam and Soviet history to answer these questions. Arguing that the sustained Soviet assault on Islam destroyed patterns of Islamic learning and thoroughly de-Islamized public life, Khalid demonstrates that Islam became synonymous with tradition and was subordinated to powerful ethnonational identities that crystallized during the Soviet period. He shows how this legacy endures today and how, for the vast majority of the population, a return to Islam means the recovery of traditions destroyed under Communism.
Islam after Communism reasons that the fear of a rampant radical Islam that dominates both Western thought and many of Central Asia’s governments should be tempered with an understanding of the politics of antiterrorism, which allows governments to justify their own authoritarian policies by casting all opposition as extremist. Placing the Central Asian experience in the broad comparative perspective of the history of modern Islam, Khalid argues against essentialist views of Islam and Muslims and provides a nuanced and well-informed discussion of the forces at work in this crucial region.
Donated by Klaus KreiserReprinted from in : Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy, (Londo... more Donated by Klaus KreiserReprinted from in : Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy, (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005)
As researchers in Central Asian Studies, we discuss the different perspectives our methodological... more As researchers in Central Asian Studies, we discuss the different perspectives our methodological approaches provide to understanding the content and context of Islam, security, and the state in the region. We acknowledge the role of bias in creating narratives that dominate regional and international discourse and question mono-causal explanations of Islamic practice and the roots of radicalism. As such, we offer insights into the challenges and best practices of doing research on Islam and security and posit Central Asian Studies as a case for the value of multi-disciplinary research.
This a rticle explores t he s o-called “ Memoirs” o f M unavvar qori Abdurashidxon o’g’li (1878-1... more This a rticle explores t he s o-called “ Memoirs” o f M unavvar qori Abdurashidxon o’g’li (1878-1931), a major figure in the politics of Turkestanin the era of the revolution and an early victim of the OGPU. The autobiographical text is a series of pokazanija written while Munavvar qori was under arrest in which he describes his political activities since the revolution. The article analyses the way in which Munavvar qori presents himself—a combination limited confession with plausible denial or extenuation—and the way he deploys language. The article also presents lengthy excerpts in English translation.
The study of Islam in Central Asia has undergone enormous
transformations in the 30 years since ... more The study of Islam in Central Asia has undergone enormous
transformations in the 30 years since the Soviet era came to an
end. Over the last three decades, a sizable corpus of literature on
Islam in Central Asia has appeared across several disciplines.
There has also been considerable debate over methods and
approach: What questions are important to ask? Which kinds of
sources are the most significant? Which voices from among
Central Asians are the most important? This study has two main
aims. First, it provides an overview of the various literatures on
Islam in Central Asia, with a sense of their trajectories in the three
decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Second, and
more importantly, it offers a critique of the critique mentioned
above. The study does so by examining the ideological and
methodological assumptions that underpin it and by articulating
the stakes involved, a task that has not yet been undertaken.
The Introduction to the archival publication presents the argument developed by Adeeb Khalid in h... more The Introduction to the archival publication presents the argument developed by Adeeb Khalid in his latest book, Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), which revises a tendency to see the creation of the Central Asian republics as simply a Soviet project and hence, ultimately, a Soviet imposition. In doing so, Khalid claims, we ignore longer-term trends in the historical imagination of Central Asia’s modernist intellectuals and the purchase that the ideas of nation and progress had on their minds. Central Asians did not come to the revolution of 1917 with a blank slate. Rather, their societies were in the midst of intense debates about the future. The revolution radicalized preexisting projects of cultural reform that interacted in multiple ways with the Bolshevik project. One result of this interaction was the creation of Uzbekistan. The document published in the “Archive” section illustrates this argument by highlighting specific language and contradictions embedded in the Jadids’ “Chaghatayist” view of Uzbekness.
Введение к архивной рубрике развивает главный тезис последней книги Адиба Халида “Создание Узбекистана: нация, империя и революция в раннем СССР” 2015), в которой пересматривается представление о том, что создание среднеазиатских республик было, прежде всего, советским политическим и этнографическим проектом, так или иначе навязанным региону из центра. Подобный подход, по мнению Халида, игнорирует важные тенденции в историческом воображении среднеазиатских модернистских интеллектуалов (джадидов) и воздействие на них идей национализма и прогресса, которые предшествовали установлению советской власти в регионе. К моменту революции 1917 года в среднеазиатских обществах шли активные дискуссии о будущем региона и его населения. Революция радикализировала уже существовавшие проекты культурных реформ, которые по-разному взаимодействовали с большевистским проектом. Публикуемый ниже и проанализированный в предисловии документ являет собой один из результатов подобного взаимодействия. Он иллюстрирует специфический язык и внутренние противоречия “чагатайского” проекта узбекскости, который смогли воплотить джадиды.
In this article, I examine what the Soviet case can contribute to the
study of imperial formation... more In this article, I examine what the Soviet case can contribute to the study of imperial formations. I find the straightforward “application” of existing postcolonial theory to the Soviet case not very satisfactory. The Soviet Union was a sprawling, multiethnic entity characterized by inequalities and hierarchies of all sorts; its citizens were subject to political and economic decisions made far away, over which they had no control. However, while having certain similarities to various kinds of empire, the Soviet Union also differed in significant ways from the overseas colonial empires that have inspired much of postcolonial theory. I argue that the Soviet Union was far more similar to a different kind of modern polity—the activist, interventionist state that seeks to sculpt its citizenry in an ideal image. Confronting the Soviet case through the literature on empire suggests many fruitful questions: Where does empire end, and where do other forms of non-representative or authoritarian polity begin? When can empire be used in thinking about the forms of political inequality in the twentieth century? What are the specificities of colonial difference?
In Making Uzbekistan, Adeeb Khalid chronicles the tumultuous history of Central Asia in the age o... more In Making Uzbekistan, Adeeb Khalid chronicles the tumultuous history of Central Asia in the age of the Russian revolution. Traumatic upheavals—war, economic collapse, famine—transformed local society and brought new groups to positions of power and authority in Central Asia, just as the new revolutionary state began to create new institutions that redefined the nature of power in the region. This was also a time of hope and ambition in which local actors seized upon the opportunity presented by the revolution to reshape their society. As the intertwined passions of nation and revolution reconfigured the imaginations of Central Asia's intellectuals, the region was remade into national republics, of which Uzbekistan was of central importance.
Making use of archival sources from Uzbekistan and Russia as well as the Uzbek- and Tajik-language press and belles lettres of the period, Khalid provides the first coherent account of the political history of the 1920s in Uzbekistan. He explores the complex interaction between Uzbek intellectuals, local Bolsheviks, and Moscow to sketch out the flux of the situation in early-Soviet Central Asia. His focus on the Uzbek intelligentsia allows him to recast our understanding of Soviet nationalities policies. Uzbekistan, he argues, was not a creation of Soviet policies, but a project of the Muslim intelligentsia that emerged in the Soviet context through the interstices of the complex politics of the period. The energies unleashed by the revolution also made possible the golden age of modern culture, as authors experimented with new literary forms and the modern Uzbek language took shape. Making Uzbekistan introduces key texts from this period and argues that what the decade witnessed was nothing short of a cultural revolution.
How do Muslims relate to Islam in societies that experienced seventy years of Soviet rule? How di... more How do Muslims relate to Islam in societies that experienced seventy years of Soviet rule? How did the utopian Bolshevik project of remaking the world by extirpating religion from it affect Central Asia? Adeeb Khalid combines insights from the study of both Islam and Soviet history to answer these questions. Arguing that the sustained Soviet assault on Islam destroyed patterns of Islamic learning and thoroughly de-Islamized public life, Khalid demonstrates that Islam became synonymous with tradition and was subordinated to powerful ethnonational identities that crystallized during the Soviet period. He shows how this legacy endures today and how, for the vast majority of the population, a return to Islam means the recovery of traditions destroyed under Communism.
Islam after Communism reasons that the fear of a rampant radical Islam that dominates both Western thought and many of Central Asia’s governments should be tempered with an understanding of the politics of antiterrorism, which allows governments to justify their own authoritarian policies by casting all opposition as extremist. Placing the Central Asian experience in the broad comparative perspective of the history of modern Islam, Khalid argues against essentialist views of Islam and Muslims and provides a nuanced and well-informed discussion of the forces at work in this crucial region.
Donated by Klaus KreiserReprinted from in : Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy, (Londo... more Donated by Klaus KreiserReprinted from in : Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy, (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005)
As researchers in Central Asian Studies, we discuss the different perspectives our methodological... more As researchers in Central Asian Studies, we discuss the different perspectives our methodological approaches provide to understanding the content and context of Islam, security, and the state in the region. We acknowledge the role of bias in creating narratives that dominate regional and international discourse and question mono-causal explanations of Islamic practice and the roots of radicalism. As such, we offer insights into the challenges and best practices of doing research on Islam and security and posit Central Asian Studies as a case for the value of multi-disciplinary research.
This a rticle explores t he s o-called “ Memoirs” o f M unavvar qori Abdurashidxon o’g’li (1878-1... more This a rticle explores t he s o-called “ Memoirs” o f M unavvar qori Abdurashidxon o’g’li (1878-1931), a major figure in the politics of Turkestanin the era of the revolution and an early victim of the OGPU. The autobiographical text is a series of pokazanija written while Munavvar qori was under arrest in which he describes his political activities since the revolution. The article analyses the way in which Munavvar qori presents himself—a combination limited confession with plausible denial or extenuation—and the way he deploys language. The article also presents lengthy excerpts in English translation.
The study of Islam in Central Asia has undergone enormous
transformations in the 30 years since ... more The study of Islam in Central Asia has undergone enormous
transformations in the 30 years since the Soviet era came to an
end. Over the last three decades, a sizable corpus of literature on
Islam in Central Asia has appeared across several disciplines.
There has also been considerable debate over methods and
approach: What questions are important to ask? Which kinds of
sources are the most significant? Which voices from among
Central Asians are the most important? This study has two main
aims. First, it provides an overview of the various literatures on
Islam in Central Asia, with a sense of their trajectories in the three
decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Second, and
more importantly, it offers a critique of the critique mentioned
above. The study does so by examining the ideological and
methodological assumptions that underpin it and by articulating
the stakes involved, a task that has not yet been undertaken.
The Introduction to the archival publication presents the argument developed by Adeeb Khalid in h... more The Introduction to the archival publication presents the argument developed by Adeeb Khalid in his latest book, Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), which revises a tendency to see the creation of the Central Asian republics as simply a Soviet project and hence, ultimately, a Soviet imposition. In doing so, Khalid claims, we ignore longer-term trends in the historical imagination of Central Asia’s modernist intellectuals and the purchase that the ideas of nation and progress had on their minds. Central Asians did not come to the revolution of 1917 with a blank slate. Rather, their societies were in the midst of intense debates about the future. The revolution radicalized preexisting projects of cultural reform that interacted in multiple ways with the Bolshevik project. One result of this interaction was the creation of Uzbekistan. The document published in the “Archive” section illustrates this argument by highlighting specific language and contradictions embedded in the Jadids’ “Chaghatayist” view of Uzbekness.
Введение к архивной рубрике развивает главный тезис последней книги Адиба Халида “Создание Узбекистана: нация, империя и революция в раннем СССР” 2015), в которой пересматривается представление о том, что создание среднеазиатских республик было, прежде всего, советским политическим и этнографическим проектом, так или иначе навязанным региону из центра. Подобный подход, по мнению Халида, игнорирует важные тенденции в историческом воображении среднеазиатских модернистских интеллектуалов (джадидов) и воздействие на них идей национализма и прогресса, которые предшествовали установлению советской власти в регионе. К моменту революции 1917 года в среднеазиатских обществах шли активные дискуссии о будущем региона и его населения. Революция радикализировала уже существовавшие проекты культурных реформ, которые по-разному взаимодействовали с большевистским проектом. Публикуемый ниже и проанализированный в предисловии документ являет собой один из результатов подобного взаимодействия. Он иллюстрирует специфический язык и внутренние противоречия “чагатайского” проекта узбекскости, который смогли воплотить джадиды.
In this article, I examine what the Soviet case can contribute to the
study of imperial formation... more In this article, I examine what the Soviet case can contribute to the study of imperial formations. I find the straightforward “application” of existing postcolonial theory to the Soviet case not very satisfactory. The Soviet Union was a sprawling, multiethnic entity characterized by inequalities and hierarchies of all sorts; its citizens were subject to political and economic decisions made far away, over which they had no control. However, while having certain similarities to various kinds of empire, the Soviet Union also differed in significant ways from the overseas colonial empires that have inspired much of postcolonial theory. I argue that the Soviet Union was far more similar to a different kind of modern polity—the activist, interventionist state that seeks to sculpt its citizenry in an ideal image. Confronting the Soviet case through the literature on empire suggests many fruitful questions: Where does empire end, and where do other forms of non-representative or authoritarian polity begin? When can empire be used in thinking about the forms of political inequality in the twentieth century? What are the specificities of colonial difference?
Empire has shown up in curious ways in the post-Soviet historiography of Russia. Historians of ts... more Empire has shown up in curious ways in the post-Soviet historiography of Russia. Historians of tsarist Russia, a polity that actually called itself an empire, have been quite suspicious of the analytical work of postcolonial critique. Although some marvelously sophisticated works ...
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 2000
Nikolai Petrovich Ostroumov arrived in Tashkent in 1877 to take up the post of director of school... more Nikolai Petrovich Ostroumov arrived in Tashkent in 1877 to take up the post of director of schools in the newly created province of Turkestan. He had been recommended to the Governor General Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufman by Nikolai Ivanovich Il'minskii, the famous Kazan missionary and Orientalist, whose student Ostroumov had been. Ostroumov had trained in Islam and Turkic languages, and this knowledge very quickly made him a confidant of Kaufman. Ostroumov retained this proximity to power all through the tsarist period. Until 1917, Ostroumov served the state in various capacities. In 1883, he was appointed the editor of the Turkiston viloyatining gazeti, the vernacular official gazette, through which he sought to shape the contours of local cultural debates in the direction of Russian state interests. He acted as a censor for local language publications, and his opinion on “native” affairs was routinely sought by local administrators. At the same time, he produced a vast corpus of scholarly writing on the ethnography and history of Central Asia, and on Islam. Ostroumov translated the Bible into Chaghatay and wrote anti-Islamic polemics in Russian. His private papers include correspondence with fellow Orientalists in Russia and abroad, and his writings give ample evidence of his involvement in the international enterprise of Orientalism.
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 2006
Review of: Marco Buttino, La Rivoluzione Capovolta: L'Asia centrale tra il crollo dell'impero Zar... more Review of: Marco Buttino, La Rivoluzione Capovolta: L'Asia centrale tra il crollo dell'impero Zarista e la formazione dell'URSS [(Naples: L'Ancora del Mediterraneo, 2003); Adrienne Edgar, Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); Vladimir Genis, Vitse-konsul Vvedenskii: Sluzhba v Persii i Bukharskom khanstve (1906-1920 gg.). Rossiiskaia diplomatiia v sud´bakh (Moscow: Sotsial'nopoliticheskaia mysl´, 2003); Arne Haugen, The Establishment of National Republics in Soviet Central Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Paula Michaels, Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin’s Central Asia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003); and Douglas T. Northrop, Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2003
While contemporary Muslim countries are not exactly textbook democracies, the desire for (more) p... more While contemporary Muslim countries are not exactly textbook democracies, the desire for (more) popular participation in the political decision-making process exists. With the current polarization of anything Western as bad and anything Islamic as good (one notices the opposite use ...
... of the Society for the Restoration of Orthodoxy in the Caucasus, attended the funeral of a we... more ... of the Society for the Restoration of Orthodoxy in the Caucasus, attended the funeral of a wealthy prince in the Okum region of Abkhazia. Accompanied by a local imperial official, he witnessed elaborate rituals of mourning and despair. The privileged Abkhaz women separated ...
... Giliaks (Nivkhs) into Russians? How "Russian" should they become how quickly? And, ... more ... Giliaks (Nivkhs) into Russians? How "Russian" should they become how quickly? And, perhaps most saliently, what exactly was the content of the Russianness whose acquisition seemed so necessary? Did non-Russians have ...
... birth of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt creation of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic basm... more ... birth of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt creation of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic basmachi movement in Central Asia repression against local Islam and the religious class in Central Asia reestablishment of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan ...
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Books by Adeeb Khalid
Making use of archival sources from Uzbekistan and Russia as well as the Uzbek- and Tajik-language press and belles lettres of the period, Khalid provides the first coherent account of the political history of the 1920s in Uzbekistan. He explores the complex interaction between Uzbek intellectuals, local Bolsheviks, and Moscow to sketch out the flux of the situation in early-Soviet Central Asia. His focus on the Uzbek intelligentsia allows him to recast our understanding of Soviet nationalities policies. Uzbekistan, he argues, was not a creation of Soviet policies, but a project of the Muslim intelligentsia that emerged in the Soviet context through the interstices of the complex politics of the period. The energies unleashed by the revolution also made possible the golden age of modern culture, as authors experimented with new literary forms and the modern Uzbek language took shape. Making Uzbekistan introduces key texts from this period and argues that what the decade witnessed was nothing short of a cultural revolution.
Islam after Communism reasons that the fear of a rampant radical Islam that dominates both Western thought and many of Central Asia’s governments should be tempered with an understanding of the politics of antiterrorism, which allows governments to justify their own authoritarian policies by casting all opposition as extremist. Placing the Central Asian experience in the broad comparative perspective of the history of modern Islam, Khalid argues against essentialist views of Islam and Muslims and provides a nuanced and well-informed discussion of the forces at work in this crucial region.
Papers by Adeeb Khalid
transformations in the 30 years since the Soviet era came to an
end. Over the last three decades, a sizable corpus of literature on
Islam in Central Asia has appeared across several disciplines.
There has also been considerable debate over methods and
approach: What questions are important to ask? Which kinds of
sources are the most significant? Which voices from among
Central Asians are the most important? This study has two main
aims. First, it provides an overview of the various literatures on
Islam in Central Asia, with a sense of their trajectories in the three
decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Second, and
more importantly, it offers a critique of the critique mentioned
above. The study does so by examining the ideological and
methodological assumptions that underpin it and by articulating
the stakes involved, a task that has not yet been undertaken.
contradictions embedded in the Jadids’ “Chaghatayist” view of Uzbekness.
Введение к архивной рубрике развивает главный тезис последней книги Адиба Халида “Создание Узбекистана: нация, империя и революция в раннем СССР” 2015), в которой пересматривается представление о том, что создание среднеазиатских республик было, прежде всего, советским политическим и этнографическим проектом, так или иначе навязанным региону из центра. Подобный подход, по мнению Халида, игнорирует важные тенденции в историческом воображении среднеазиатских модернистских интеллектуалов (джадидов) и воздействие на них идей национализма и прогресса, которые предшествовали установлению советской власти в регионе. К моменту революции 1917 года в среднеазиатских обществах шли активные дискуссии о будущем региона и его населения. Революция радикализировала уже существовавшие проекты культурных реформ, которые по-разному взаимодействовали с большевистским проектом. Публикуемый ниже и проанализированный в предисловии документ являет собой один из результатов подобного взаимодействия. Он иллюстрирует специфический язык и внутренние противоречия “чагатайского” проекта узбекскости, который смогли воплотить джадиды.
study of imperial formations. I find the straightforward “application”
of existing postcolonial theory to the Soviet case not very satisfactory.
The Soviet Union was a sprawling, multiethnic entity characterized by
inequalities and hierarchies of all sorts; its citizens were subject to political
and economic decisions made far away, over which they had no
control. However, while having certain similarities to various kinds of
empire, the Soviet Union also differed in significant ways from the
overseas colonial empires that have inspired much of postcolonial theory.
I argue that the Soviet Union was far more similar to a different
kind of modern polity—the activist, interventionist state that seeks to
sculpt its citizenry in an ideal image. Confronting the Soviet case
through the literature on empire suggests many fruitful questions:
Where does empire end, and where do other forms of non-representative
or authoritarian polity begin? When can empire be used in thinking
about the forms of political inequality in the twentieth century?
What are the specificities of colonial difference?
Making use of archival sources from Uzbekistan and Russia as well as the Uzbek- and Tajik-language press and belles lettres of the period, Khalid provides the first coherent account of the political history of the 1920s in Uzbekistan. He explores the complex interaction between Uzbek intellectuals, local Bolsheviks, and Moscow to sketch out the flux of the situation in early-Soviet Central Asia. His focus on the Uzbek intelligentsia allows him to recast our understanding of Soviet nationalities policies. Uzbekistan, he argues, was not a creation of Soviet policies, but a project of the Muslim intelligentsia that emerged in the Soviet context through the interstices of the complex politics of the period. The energies unleashed by the revolution also made possible the golden age of modern culture, as authors experimented with new literary forms and the modern Uzbek language took shape. Making Uzbekistan introduces key texts from this period and argues that what the decade witnessed was nothing short of a cultural revolution.
Islam after Communism reasons that the fear of a rampant radical Islam that dominates both Western thought and many of Central Asia’s governments should be tempered with an understanding of the politics of antiterrorism, which allows governments to justify their own authoritarian policies by casting all opposition as extremist. Placing the Central Asian experience in the broad comparative perspective of the history of modern Islam, Khalid argues against essentialist views of Islam and Muslims and provides a nuanced and well-informed discussion of the forces at work in this crucial region.
transformations in the 30 years since the Soviet era came to an
end. Over the last three decades, a sizable corpus of literature on
Islam in Central Asia has appeared across several disciplines.
There has also been considerable debate over methods and
approach: What questions are important to ask? Which kinds of
sources are the most significant? Which voices from among
Central Asians are the most important? This study has two main
aims. First, it provides an overview of the various literatures on
Islam in Central Asia, with a sense of their trajectories in the three
decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Second, and
more importantly, it offers a critique of the critique mentioned
above. The study does so by examining the ideological and
methodological assumptions that underpin it and by articulating
the stakes involved, a task that has not yet been undertaken.
contradictions embedded in the Jadids’ “Chaghatayist” view of Uzbekness.
Введение к архивной рубрике развивает главный тезис последней книги Адиба Халида “Создание Узбекистана: нация, империя и революция в раннем СССР” 2015), в которой пересматривается представление о том, что создание среднеазиатских республик было, прежде всего, советским политическим и этнографическим проектом, так или иначе навязанным региону из центра. Подобный подход, по мнению Халида, игнорирует важные тенденции в историческом воображении среднеазиатских модернистских интеллектуалов (джадидов) и воздействие на них идей национализма и прогресса, которые предшествовали установлению советской власти в регионе. К моменту революции 1917 года в среднеазиатских обществах шли активные дискуссии о будущем региона и его населения. Революция радикализировала уже существовавшие проекты культурных реформ, которые по-разному взаимодействовали с большевистским проектом. Публикуемый ниже и проанализированный в предисловии документ являет собой один из результатов подобного взаимодействия. Он иллюстрирует специфический язык и внутренние противоречия “чагатайского” проекта узбекскости, который смогли воплотить джадиды.
study of imperial formations. I find the straightforward “application”
of existing postcolonial theory to the Soviet case not very satisfactory.
The Soviet Union was a sprawling, multiethnic entity characterized by
inequalities and hierarchies of all sorts; its citizens were subject to political
and economic decisions made far away, over which they had no
control. However, while having certain similarities to various kinds of
empire, the Soviet Union also differed in significant ways from the
overseas colonial empires that have inspired much of postcolonial theory.
I argue that the Soviet Union was far more similar to a different
kind of modern polity—the activist, interventionist state that seeks to
sculpt its citizenry in an ideal image. Confronting the Soviet case
through the literature on empire suggests many fruitful questions:
Where does empire end, and where do other forms of non-representative
or authoritarian polity begin? When can empire be used in thinking
about the forms of political inequality in the twentieth century?
What are the specificities of colonial difference?
by local administrators. At the same time, he produced a vast corpus of scholarly
writing on the ethnography and history of Central Asia, and on Islam. Ostroumov translated the Bible into Chaghatay and wrote anti-Islamic polemics in Russian. His private papers include correspondence with fellow Orientalists in Russia and abroad, and his writings give ample evidence of his involvement in the international enterprise of Orientalism.